Why Measure?
As tobacco passes through the GLT and Primary Plants
it undergoes many procedures to achieve the desired
burn and taste characteristics of the final cigarette.
Each procedure, whether it be drying, re-moisturising,
rolling, cutting or conditioning, has an optimum product
moisture level to ensure maximum efficiency of the operation
with regards the working of the machinery, reducing
wastage and production of quality uniform product ready
for the next stage of Production Process.

Sensor
The new MCT
360-T and well known predecessor,
the MCT 101-T, are sensors that have been designed specifically
to address the requirements of the Tobacco Industry in terms
of: variable composition and presentation of the product,
the installation environment, and operation/data handling.

The MCT
660, the laboratory or at-line
gauge, is a useful compliment to the on-line gauges. It can
be used as a reference for the on-line gauges and can in addition
to moisture, provide nicotine and sugar measurements on milled
tobacco.

Gauge outputs, Operator Interface
& Display
The MCT 360-T is available with or without a local operator
interface or display as all the processing is carried out
within the sensor head and the measurement is output via 4-20mA,
0-10V, RS232, RS485 or any bus. Installation time and effort
is minimised with the absence of a local interface, but should
samples be collected for cross checks an OI is useful…
in the event, one could be simply plugged into the gauge at
the sampling location.

The Measurement
PSC recognizes that a universal no-compromise tobacco calibration,
although desirable isn’t feasible, the number and variety
of samples required for such a calibration precludes the possibility.
PSC’s approach is to provide an approximate calibration,
or a calibration based on customer samples over the expected
moisture range . In addition to measuring moisture content,
the MCT
360-T can be configured to measure product temperature.

Typical measurement accuracies lie
within +/- 0.1 to 0.3% dependent on sample properties. Generally
the higher the moisture , the larger the sample size, and
the more variable the particle/sample size distribution, the
higher the error is.